Tutorial: Wire Removal in After Effects 

Remember your grain folks!! There were a lot of patches here but no mention of de-noising the original plate and reapplying grain to sit them better into the comp. Even the best shot footage has some grain so its always good to add this to your freeze frames and photoshop patches.

Extremely well done tutorial! I wish there were more of these around RU-vid to give myself a thorough education on VFX work. If you have some time to do a morphing video as well I'd appreciate it. Great work!

You can't even tell the difference at 360p ;)

RU-vid compression is absolutely terrible... Really noticeable here...

Man you are awesome, ppl don't realize all the sh*t we need to go through in behind the scene to make things happens. Thanks for your time and this awesome tutorial.

That is a lot of work we can't see. ;) Awesome!

really nice tutorial, love this video! thanks a lot for sharing your work! :)

Question(s): Are you doing these vfx shots before or after the picture is graded?? Are you working with RAW footage, and how did you deliver it to the editor? Obviously retaining quality is a must and making the workflow as non-destructive as possible. Also, that morphing technique is incredible! Would love to see a more in-depth look for what you did with that particular shot.

BRASIL, CADẼ VOCẼ PARA NOS ENSINAR

In my humble opinion you guys are amazing!!! I am just starting to get into editing and I have learned a great deal from you. It shows that you guys care about your viewers really learning and getting it. Your honesty and straight forward approach is so refreshing and phenomenal. I love you guys at Film Riot and all the great people you bring on board for us as your viewers to gain the knowledge we need. This is my film school. Thank you guys!

i want a morphing tutorial!!!! but im not demanding....haha

Great Tutorial because you should how bad wires can be. Nobody really shows how tough wire rigs are. Thanks. OMG he said Elastic Reality. ;-) Old Pro. Wish you could do a tracking Mark removable as well, with c-stands. Thanks.

iss

Well… there are about 20 wires in that first shot. I even saw ropes!!! One wire?! What lazy kind of wire removal is that? Well, only in the colonies … LOL.

Wow! I really dug this tutorial!

Props to the guy being thrown back and forth over a 1000 times for this video give him a juice box

so... is there really not just an eraser tool for this? all that rotoing looked like it took forever. why cant you just go frame by frame and erase the little bits of the background that are clipping over his face???

you can just use wire removal plugin from tara arts

I faced a similar problem, where there was a clamp visible in the shot, that holds the green fabric on the rig for the green screen, while the actor was moving from the left side the the right side of the frame. My approach was masking and rotoing the clamp instead of rotoing the actor, so I needed only to mask the clamp and change the masks shape loosely, so it covers only the visible parts of the clamp, while the actor was passing in front of it. Would this have been a possible solution for wire replacement in this case, to only roto the patch, where needed, instead of masking the actor to get his face back in the patch?

"hey, check out the work you can't see!" lol thank you sir

Can anyone recommend any practice footage to apply these techniques to?

great video but what if you don't have a clean plate, like if the camera moves in the shit?

ROTO TIME! What are your thoughts on tracking limbs attaching solid and using an alpha matte? Great tutorial by the way.

Why not just use the wire removal preset for some of these frames?

Thank you for all this knowledge

How long did this take you, and can I hire you for a project?

Why roto the face and not the wire itself? I mean, I would think a wire has a simpler shape, right? So, wouldn't that be less work?

I just came here 3 years later to say... I hate roto like I hate a nail in my foot.

the good stuff wasn't mentioned ;-)

I'm curious, why is it that they don't green screen wires(like paint them that fluorescent green)? Wouldn't that speed up the removal process, or does that cause some other issue?

Subscribed! 🤩

how to download quality footage ?

what tools did u use to morph?

Forgive me if it was mentioned in the video, but why not roto out the wire itself rather than roto-ing the actor? Wouldn't you achieve the same results by masking out the wire and placing it over the empty shot you tracked? From what I understand in this video, you are separating the actor from the wire, and placing that over the empty still. Couldn't you get the same results by separating the wire from the actor frame by frame (which would be much less keyframes since the wire is generally a straight line)?

Man, that's a shit load of work. Kind of relieved, I was making some stupid shit in AE and some of the editing took so long. Hats off, I guess this line of work can be as tedious as an accountancy role. :|

What wires do they even use??

Curious why you dont use the rotobrush? I do vfx on lots of stop motion rig removal shots and it saves soooo muchhh time!

Can you please do a video explaining roto in after effects in depth, please, I still, after watching plenty of videos, don't understand how it actually works, I've been trying different things myself but it's killing me. Either that or reply as to how you roto. Thank you!!!

Very real tutorial. Some people think there are magic ways for everything, but sometimes it is detailed work.

How to tie up the wire first of all ?

Hi, It amazes me how complex this looks, yet when I look for someone to show mew how I can add an image on a simple clear and clean straightforward object, they refer me to Mocha saying these things are too difficult... Yet I see something as complex in this video ???

finally the video I've been looking for thanks for giving me some tips tho we have in common, I just don't know how to do it, really a big help thanks a lot make some more tutorials ^_^ I'm subscribing :D

Hi! Thanks a lot for a very useful video! Do you know where I could find some footage with wires to practice the knowledge? I tried searching the internet, but didn't see any..

Thanks a lot! This is exactly what I was look for! I always questioned whether it was okay to move mask points around as the perspective changes (like a point that was previously on the ear now defining a patch of hair), but the answer appears to be: If you do it frame-by-frame... nice to see it works as "dirty" as that. Thank you!! Also: ROTOOOO TOOOIME!

No invisible wires, for wire work?

footage

Really helpful, thanks!

Hi there Sean. Is there a way for Wire removal using a free software such as Shotcut or any other free software? you guys are doing a great job.

can you do a more difficult shot please :P? i have a rig removal with trees moving besides it.. any ideas?

Man I wanna use wires for some video work but ima make the shot as simple as I can

Thanks a lot for another Great Tutorial..I'd really appreciate if you could provide us this footage only the one where wire has to be removed. Cheers!

The best help and ideas to use on a 9 wires removal shot. In this case, a "Fix it in post" classic. Many Thanks!

That second to last shot is guaranteed to give me nightmares.

why do you not use the rotoscope tool? i'd imagine that would make this whole process to a lot faster. also, why no mention of the wire removal tool... since that's kinda what its there for?

fantastic tutorial... and not too long. Knowing the basics is huge. I'd personally be interested in seeing more to the last 2 sequences as well

A mention of commotion, that takes me back. Used to love using that, all those handy autopaint tools(I know you can do the same in after effects with tracks etc but it always seemed intuitive in commotion - but that might just be rose tinted glasses speaking)

why not roto the wire out on the clean plate instead of the guy...

Amazing work! love the details. thank you for this!, learned a few new things!

i rarely see people on youtube use the rotobrush for well, rotoscoping lol is it a bad tool (im still fresh off the after effect noob boat) or just force of habit?

He said "Commotion". He has a lot of experience. ;-)

i know this video is a bit old but on 34:56 can you just track the mask now to make it easier because if im correct the mask can be tracked now right?

I don't think that your tutorials are too long. Very informative! Keep up the good tuts :) also love how you are so happy to work hours upon hours to make the director happy

I have a question. I just got into the industry, and I think like me, a lot of people got assigned a particular job, wire removal :), my question is that, you mentioned in the vid that you can always paint the wire away, I have encountered a problem doing this, but I did this for larger number continuous frames, the "fixed" area flashed quite noticeable, I tried my best to used similar pixels... is there anyway to fix this??

Could you make a video about '' how to make 'mission impossible' movie intro.

I experience a little (minimal) loss in quality when exporting from photoshop. I've tried several different export setting now but it keep losing (the same amount of) quality every time. The video file seems to be 8-bit after export what ever I do. Any thoughts?

I have search a long time a tutorial like this! thanks

You mean I can't just press a button?

Hey i have a question wouldnt it have been easy to just use the after effects wire removal thingy just saying i mean guide me if i am wrong thank you :)

where do i get wire? i might need it plz tell me where to buy it thanks

Excellent tutorial, thanks a lot!

great video... so good..

It wasn't long, it was beautifull!

Absolutely loved this tutorial. Very detailed and clear

This is SO dope

Thank you! You did a great job with the last one!

Muy bueno!

Sean Mullin is an amazing VFX artist. Great tutorial.

Thanks. Very entertaining!

One person is like "whaaaaat?"

Good stuff!

Which software??

Thank you! This helped a lot!

a like it

Thank you Sean!

20 hours for one shot?! You are totally inefficient.

is there any reason why you didnt use rotobrush? It's kinda slow when you play it back a it can sometimes do weird stuff, but it does a lot of work for you...thansk fr the video :)

Oh, I have a question. Is it possible to open an after effects file in mocha PRO or do I have to render it out in AE (or premiere) and then import it?